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Title: If I Don't, Others Will
Author: John S. Adams [
More Titles by Adams]
"IF I don't make it, others will;
So I'll keep up my death-drugged still.
Come, Zip, my boy, pile on the wood,
And make it blaze as blaze it should;
For I do heartily love to see
The flames dance round it merrily!
"Hogsheads, you want?-well, order them made;
The maker will take his pay in trade.
If, at the first, he will not consent,
Treat him with wine till his wits are spent;
Then, when his reason is gone, you know
Whate'er we want from his hands will flow!
"Ah, what do you say?-'that won't be fair'?
You're conscientious, I do declare!
I thought so once, when I was a boy,
But since I have been in this employ
I've practised it, and many a trick,
By the advice of my friend, Old Nick.
I thought 't was wrong till he hushed my fears
With derisive looks, and taunts, and jeers,
And solemnly said to me, 'My Bill,
If you don't do it, some others will!'
"If I don't sell it, some others will;
So bottles, and pitchers, and mugs I'll fill.
When trembling child, who is sent, shall come,
Shivering with cold, and ask for rum
(Yet fearing to raise its wet eyes up),
I'll measure it out in its broken cup!
"Ah! what do you say?-'the child wants bread'?
Well, 't is n't my duty to see it fed;
If the parents will send to me to buy,
Do you think I'd let the chance go by
To get me gain? O, I'm no such fool;
That is not taught in the world's wide school!
"When the old man comes with nervous gait,
Loving, yet cursing his hapless fate,
Though children and wife and friends may meet,
And me with tears and with sighs entreat
Not to sell him that which will be his death,
I'll hear what the man with money saith;
If he asks for rum and shows the gold,
I'll deal it forth, and it shall be sold!
"Ah! do you say, 'I should heed the cries
Of weeping friends that around me rise'?
May be you think so; I tell you what,--
I've a rule which proves that I should not;
For, know you, though the poison kill,
If I don't sell it, some others will!"
A strange fatality came on all men,
Who met upon a mountain's rocky side;
They had been sane and happy until then,
But then on earth they wished not to abide.
The sun shone brightly, but it had no charm;
The soft winds blew, but them did not elate;
They seemed to think all joined to do them harm,
And urge them onward to a dreadful fate.
I did say "all men," yet there were a few
Who kept their reason well,--yet, weak, what could they do?
The men rushed onward to the jagged rocks,
Then plunged like madmen in their madness o'er;
From peak to peak they scared the feathered flocks,
And far below lay weltering in their gore.
The sane men wondered, trembled, and they strove
To stay the furies; but they could not do it.
Whate'er they did, however fenced the drove,
The men would spring the bounds or else break through it,
And o'er the frightful precipice they leaped,
Till rock and tree seemed in their red blood steeped.
One of the sane men was a great distiller
And one sold liquors in a famous city;
And, by the way, one was an honest miller,
Who looked on both their trades in wrath and pity.
This good "Honestus" spoke to them, and said,
"You'd better jump; if you don't, others will."
Each took his meaning, yet each shook his head.
"That is no reason we ourselves should kill,"
Said they, while very stupid-brained they seemed,
As though they of the miller's meaning never dreamed.
[The end]
John S. Adams's poem: If I Don't, Others Will
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